This week’s song is another case of “the music is better than the game”. While I was disappointed with Endless Space 2, this track is stirring, evocative, and — as an imperial leitmotif — suitably bombastic. Enjoy!

I encountered this week’s song a number of years ago in Illwinter’s Conquest of Elysium 3. To me, it’s a very “high fantasy” song, conjuring up images of bold heroes riding out into the great wild. Enjoy!

In honour of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, this week’s music is a blast from the past. I’ve chosen three very distinct songs from 1991’s A Link to the Past – the Hyrule Overture, LttP‘s upbeat, “we’re off on an adventure” world map theme; second, the imposing Hyrule Castle theme; and perhaps the most interesting of the three, the Dark World theme, which for me always conjures up memories of Link standing atop that ziggurat, the sunset in the background. Enjoy!

Back in 2013, when Expeditions: Conquistador was new, I featured a gentle, atmospheric overworld theme from its soundtrack. Three years later, I still listen to its excellent music. This week’s piece is the bold, triumphant “Cadiz” – enjoy!

This week’s song is Video Games Live’s arrangement of one of my favourite soundtracks, Okami. It comes from VGL’s recently released Level 5 album, available in the usual places (and also on Spotify). I think I’ve backed or purchased every VGL album so far, and this is one of the strongest. Enjoy!

This is one of my favourite pieces of music in Stellaris, embodying the game’s – and the science fiction genre’s – spirit of exploration and discovery. At its start, it’s understated and almost ethereal; it takes on a questing, inquisitive tone around 0:45; and finally blossoms into liveliness at 2:40. Enjoy!

Welcome back to Musical Monday. To celebrate the release anniversary of Mad Max: Fury Road, I present my favourite track from the movie. An action theme through and through (it plays during the canyon sequence), it begins all clash and discordance, before working up to the more hopeful note at 3:00. Enjoy!

This week’s theme is taken from Emperor of the Fading Suns, a cult-classic 1990s TBS that I’ve previously raved about. EFS was – and still is – the defining video game implementation of “feudal future” science fiction, with a soundtrack to match. I’m kicking around ideas for a Let’s Play; until then, enjoy!

Celebrating the fifth birthday of Total War: Shogun 2, this week’s Musical Monday is slightly different – a behind-the-scenes look at its taiko drum music. I was interested to learn it was recorded in Sydney by a local troupe, Taikoz. Enjoy!

This week’s song is from a game I haven’t played — I know it from its appearance on the orchestrated Final Fantasy album below. Following the recent mobile re-release of Final Fantasy IX, the time seems right to highlight this lovely piece. Enjoy!

Sometimes tense, sometimes exciting – what would Firaxis’ XCOM have been without its soundtrack? With the release of XCOM 2 imminent, I thought I’d highlight Michael McCann’s superb music for the original:

(Note that the versions above, from the composer’s Soundcloud page, appear slightly different from what plays in-game.)

Several tracks stand out. First off is the menu theme, “Enemy Unknown”; its low, ominous beat echoes the ambient music in the Gollop Brothers’ original game, before swelling into something more rousing.

“Ready for Battle”, the squad select theme, is one of the few “heroic” pieces on the soundtrack. I’ve heard it dozens of times and it still hasn’t grown old.

The intense “Combat 8” is my favourite battle theme. I love how it compresses the emotional beats of XCOM combat into less than a minute, from the warble at 0:15, through a harsher blare, to a few hopeful seconds around 0:40.

Welcome to the first Musical Monday of 2016! To inaugurate the year, I have chosen the warm, hopeful theme of the Final Fantasy series, as performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Enjoy the song, and may you all have happy listening.

This week’s song is one of the world map pieces from Neocore’s King Arthur, an interesting if imperfect game that I briefly played. This song’s ethereal vocals (and another similar-sounding theme) were a highlight. Enjoy!

Or, to give it its full title, “The Battle Of Hoth (Ion Cannon/Imperial Walkers/Beneath the AT-AT/Escape in the Millennium Falcon)”. This is 15 minutes long; I believe it’s the actual background music used in the movie. Sit back and enjoy!

This week, I’ve chosen to highlight the soundtrack of Sins of a Solar Empire, the game that enticed me back to real-time strategy after almost a decade of burnout. I associate the three pieces below with the phases of an engagement: “Battle 8”, with its opening drumbeat and ominous brass, makes me imagine the rival fleets jumping in, their admirals manoeuvring into position. “Battle 12” makes me think of the battle itself. And the triumphant “Upbeat 3” makes me think of the moment of decision, when the TEC Marza-class dreadnoughts unleash their missile barrage, when the enemy fleet crumbles and the survivors flee for the edge of the gravity well. Enjoy!

One of the things I love about AC4 is its use of … well, not quite period music – Wikipedia dates this song to the 1800s, well over a century after the game takes place – but pre-existing folk music and shanties. For me, that does a lot to root the game in a sense of time and place. Enjoy!

Last Christmas, I spent some very pleasurable hours in the shoes of Alexios Komnenos, Emperor of Byzantium, trying to rebuild my battered empire. This week’s song, added as part of the “Songs of Byzantium” DLC for Crusader Kings II, formed part of that experience. Enjoy!

I love Endless Legend‘s soundtrack, and I love its imaginative, distinct factions. This week, I thought I’d bring them together. Below, I highlight one theme from each of the three factions that I’ve played (there are eight factions total, each with two themes). Enjoy!

Have I got a treat for you this week! The music of Tropico 4 is fantastic, both in its own right, and as a way to bring the setting to life. Enjoy – and check out artist Alex Torres’ other work. I’m listening to his catalogue on Spotify as I type…

I cannot believe that in almost three years of Musical Mondays (how time flies), I have never presented this song. It’s the first battle theme heard in Final Fantasy Tactics – arguably it’s the signature battle theme of FFT. Unfortunately, there has never been an orchestrated or remastered version of the FFT soundtrack; the song below is what you would hear in the original Playstation or PSP game. Enjoy!